Carry me through
by pamy
Summary: It all began in an old house at the corner of the street. That's where Emma was living the first time she saw a ghost and it's because of that ghost that she met Dean. It's not until years later that they team up however and become partners. Together with first Richie and then Dean they drive around the country and hunt things. Written for the Het Big bang.
1. Chapter 1

**Written for the het big bang. I wanted to write a Dean/Emma fic in which both worlds crossed over but it turned into this. There may be a sequel to this but I haven't figured it out yet. ** **A thank you to twisted_slinky for having made the art to this fic which I will link to as soon as I have it. ** **I don't own either show, each belongs to their respective owners. Trust me if I did it wouldn't be so good and you know my favorite characters would still be alive.**

* * *

It all happened in an old, two story house on the corner of Chestnut Street.

The first time Emma saw the house – on a Friday afternoon somewhere in September in the year she turned eight – she thought it looked _old _and somehow, if that was possible for a house, _tired _and _done. _She thinks, sometimes, that that was just her active imagination or perhaps, as a child, she had been able to see things that adults could not but her brain had been unable to truly comprehend and so it had settled on the house looked _tired. _The thing was the house might have looked old but it really wasn't, sure it was older than all the other houses in the street but it had obviously been renovated and it was newly painted, it should have looked, if not new, than at least _fresh_ (if such a thing was possible for a house of course.) But it didn't, it looked old and to her – and to the social worker who brought her here, Cindy, too if her sudden intake of breath and her clear reluctance to leave Emma here were anything to go by – it seemed like it could fall apart at any second. The strangest thing about the house however – at least to her and, as it turned out, to many others in the street – wasn't how old the house looked but the color of the door. It was the strangest shade of green and for the live of her Emma couldn't remember ever having seen a green door (at least not _that _kind of green) and especially not in a neighborhood like this.

_That _is really the strangest part about the house, Emma realizes much later, it's neither the fact that it looks so old nor the green door, it's the combination of it all existing in _this _street.

Because the street itself, the neighborhood, is _perfect _even Emma could see that at the time even though she was just a child. The houses were bright, there was laughter everywhere, children played on the streets or walked their dogs, there were white picket fences and smiling parents, it was, in short, the kind of street one _wanted _to live in. (The kind, Emma found out later, that only really seemed to exist in movies and on TV because the truth was that it _looked _perfect on the surface but on closer examination it was never actually _perfect.)_ But the house on the corner, the one she was going to be living in, didn't look like it actually belonged in here; it was too old, too different, and too wrong. And yet, at the same time, it really _did _belong here, the house (while older) looked just like all the others and, if one saw pictures of the street, nothing about it looked odd. That's why nobody thought it odd to bring children there, that's why she was on her way because nobody thought something was wrong about it.

But on the outside it looked wrong.

But that was on the outside, on the inside it looked finally looked perfect, Emma suspected it looked exactly like all the other houses in the street – bar a few alterations – and any feeling of wrongness she and Cindy had when they stood outside evaporated when they actually entered the house. As soon as she entered the house and actually talked to the people that would be Emma's new parents – and they looked really nice the first time she saw them but Emma had learned by then that they _always _looked nice the first time they met them and their true colors usually didn't show until after the social worker left. The point is that once Cindy talked to them she calmed down and any reservations she had about leaving Emma here disappeared in a flash. It was always, and would always, be the same: Cindy (or another social worker) would talk with the new parents, tell them a little about their new foster child and then she'd smile at Emma and say: "Everything will be alright" and "Call if you ever need anything." (But Emma learned not to call, she learned to live in the home they gave her, it was easier then moving all the time.)

By the time she arrived, on that Friday afternoon, the strange things in the house have already been happening for quite a while.

Emma is kind of glad about that because she fears that, if they were like some other foster parents – the one's she'd known and the ones she'd only heard about by then – that they would somehow find a way to blame _her. _And she hadn't known enough about Jameson's then to know if they were those kind of parents or the kind that would actually love her and take care of her. But the good thing – and really the _only _good thing about the whole haunting thing – about it is that since it had been going on for so long and they couldn't blame her than that meant that they couldn't harm her because of it or send her back to where she came from. (She was still looking for a home back then and hoping that in some way she would be able to get one even though she learned later she never really would.)

According to Thomas, her new foster brother who was about three years older than her – the only actual son of her new parents – the rumors were (the legend, the story) that whatever was happening at the house, and nobody could really figure out what it was, had been happening for a long time, long before even _they_ moved into this house. Nobody really knows, Thomas tells her, the truth but some say that long ago there was a little girl, about her age, with long blond hair and she disappeared one day and was never seen again, but that was many years ago. (It should probably be noted at this point that Emma was wrong about her new foster parents: they really, really _wanted _to be her parents but as she learned later there were too many things going on around them for them to actually succeed.)

The first time he tells her the story, on her first night at the house in fact, she thinks he's just trying to scare her like most boys his age will do. Because they always think – something she's learned quite quickly but she supposes all children do – that just because she's eight and they're older than her that she'll just fall for their stupid little tales but Emma, Emma is _smarter _than that. He tells her that at night, when the darkness is dense, lights will suddenly flicker, doors will open and close for no real reason and she'll hear strange sounds, sounds she'll never be able to place and at times – though he tells her it's only happened to him once and he's never been sure if he dreamed it or not – she'll see things that nobody else will and nobody will ever believe her (even if they too will see and hear some strange things.) There are other things too, things he can't quite describe and everything gets worse the longer she'll live here (at the beginning, when they first moved in here, it was just a little and they'd always thought 'it's just the wind.') Thomas tells her that the rumor is that the ghost – because that's what everybody's going with not that Emma believes a word of it - will eventually kill the people that inhabit the house. He tells her that sometimes people die but most people, most people move away before that.

She doesn't believe him, not even a little and when that night her door opens suddenly and closes again and the lights in the hallway flicker she _thinks _it's just Thomas trying to scare her. (Because _that _is just the kind of thing a boy his age will do.)

But when she finally gets sick of it – and she does try to pretend it's not scaring her for the longest time but she's just a little girl and after a while it does get to her – and goes off to confront him she finds that he's asleep in his bed. And he's not pretending either because the strange things are still going on, and suddenly she's just a little girl in a strange house where things are happening that scare her and she's all alone. She could have woken him and perhaps he would have laughed but he might have taken care of her anyway. The thing is she didn't know enough about him or this new family to know if she could wake him without creating problems for herself. So instead of waking him she goes back to her room, quietly, and crawls into her new bed (with red sheets which she kind of hates because she really doesn't like that color.) She's _not _afraid; perhaps if she repeats it enough times it will one day become real.

And then, just when she thinks it's finally over, she sees _her. _

Standing in the doorway, the little girl of the tale she supposes. Just a little older then her with long blond hair – just like her in fact – and wearing a beautiful dress (though Emma herself would never wear a dress like that.) She doesn't move, doesn't say anything, the little girl jus stares at her and Emma does nothing but stare back. She looks sad, Emma thinks, sand and tired and lonely. So lonely in fact that for a moment, a tiny instant, Emma forgets that it's a dead little girl and wants to go over and hug her, just to make her smile. She wants to play with her and hang out with her and make everything better for her, but she's dead and so Emma can't help her anymore. She's not sure how long they look at each other but eventually the girl speaks and suddenly she's very cold (and the world is cold and suddenly she just wants to _run.)_

"My room! This is my room! Get out!"

And then Emma screams, as loud as she can – forgetting in her fear that she was trying not to make her new family angry – and then, just as soon as she appeared, the girl is gone. And then her new father – a man whose name she feels she should be able to recall but she actually can't – is by her side, telling her everything is okay. And the mother – whose name is Lucy at least Emma thinks that's her name –makes her a cup of hot cocoa to make her feel better and Thomas (who before had tried to scare her) now offers to sleep in her room. And Emma feels at home here, Emma thinks that with time this might become her favorite place (even if there is something strange about this house.)

Her new father tells her that everything is alright, that it was just a dream.

And Emma, Emma believes him.

* * *

The thing about the house, and all the strange things that happen in it, is that after a few weeks Emma actually gets used to it.

She even gets used to the ghost of the little girl, though apparently, as it turns out, she is the only one who can actually see her. Thomas tells her that though sometimes he _almost _sees something he's never actually seen the ghost and besides, he tells her when she finally asks him, he's not even sure if the girl had ever existed. Perhaps, he says, all the strange things that have been happening are somewhat normal and they, with the imagination of a children, have just made it worse. At first Emma believes him but after a while, though the strange things somehow fade a little – or perhaps she gets so used to it that they no longer register – the little girl never does.

Still, despite all that, Emma is _happy, _really happy for the first time in a very long time.

(Perhaps even for the first time _ever._)

Because the house itself might look strange on the outside and on the inside it might be slightly scary but the family is _perfect _at least to her. She has a father who reads her stories at night and teaches her how to ride a bike – which nobody had taken the time to do before – and a mother who goes out of her way to find out what Emma's favorite food is and makes it for her and a brother who teases her and tries to scare her but also protects her and plays with her. It might not have been perfect, there might have been things that were wrong with her new family that she was too young to understand – money problems or fights between her new parents – but to her, at the time, it was perfect. And it always would be, nothing, no other family, would ever be able to take its place. The Jameson's are her favorite family and Emma will always think of them as _her _family (and perhaps, in another world where there is no ghost haunting their new home and no neighbors who whisper about some things and no social service that jumps the gun, it always would have been. But life is the way it is and there is nothing she can do to change it.)

The thing about the little girl is that she's somehow _everywhere. _

(But Emma is the only one who can actually _see._)

The little girl – who eventually one day in the garden while they're playing a game introduces herself as Carla – is scared and alone (and Emma thinks that the reason Carla attracted her is because Emma was like her, alone and scared.) She's never angry, not really, the only time she actually is – the only time Emma is afraid of her – is when she screams about her room, when she tells Emma to leave. (But after a while, after a few months, the ghost stops doing even that, it's around the time Emma tells her that the room belongs to the both of them and they could share it, Emma doesn't really mind she's quite to use it by now. Though, of course, she had never actually shared a room with a dead person before.) Perhaps it's strange how used she has gotten to Carla, perhaps it's strange how much she likes her but to her, at the time, it felt _normal. _

She plays hide-and-seek with her in the garden of her new house; they play on the swings.

She plays with Carla when Thomas is off doing big boy things.

Her father thinks it's adoring that she has an imaginary friend, her mother thinks it's strange that she didn't have one before – apparently that is one of the things social workers warn the families about – and her brother doesn't think much about it. Or at least he never says anything about it though she suspects that Thomas thinks it's strange she asked about the ghostly little girl and then, suddenly, had an imaginary friend.

But nobody really considers that her imaginary friend is a ghost.

(Why would they after all.)

* * *

The first time she sees Dean is on the playground two blocks from her new home.

She's been living with the Jameson's – and Carla of course – for about three months when they show (and later when she's older and she understands more she'll wonder why they didn't come _before _that.) It's Thomas really who always decides when they're going to the playground, he's old enough – at least according to his parents – to walk their alone after all but they always tell him he has to take Emma too because it's only right that he does. That day she hadn't really wanted to go – she and Carla had been having the time of their lives – but Thomas had insisted and since he couldn't go without her Emma always felt guilty when he had to stay home.

Dean had been sitting on of the swings while his little brother – Sam she learned later – played in the sand before him. Thomas told her to stay in the playground where he could always her while he went off play football with his friends – which is really what he always did when they came here and Emma would always sit on the swings.

"Hi, I'm Emma."

"Hi, Dean and that's my brother Sam."

She smiled at the little boy building some kind of sandcastle in the sand before them – he was maybe six, Emma couldn't quite tell, she'd always found it difficult to figure out somebody's age just by looking at them – and started talking with Dean. It wasn't the most important conversation of her live, just two lonely kids who spend an afternoon talking about silly things and playing ridiculous games. The one thing she truly noticed, the one thing that stuck with her, was that the entire time they were talking and playing Dean refused to go very far from the sandbox and kept one eye on the little boy playing before. (Later she realizes that Thomas too had been playing quite close and keeping an eye on her but at the time she didn't really realize that.) She's not sure how long they stayed but after a while Thomas came by just to check on her and asks her if she didn't mind staying while he played another game, he even asked her in a joking tone if Carla is there too and then he leaves again.

Dean asks her about that of course but Emma doesn't really tell him the truth.

(What is she supposed to tell him after all? That Carla is her imaginary best friend? A dead little girl she can only see when she's inside or around her new home?)

Later, when they're leaving, Sam gives her a flower he's found somewhere and Dean smiles and waves at her. They're her friends, they are, but she doesn't really think she'll ever see them again (Dean did imply that they move around a lot.) She doesn't really think that's strange though because as a foster child she's had a lot of friends that were gone quite soon but they were still her _friends. _

* * *

The house is completely dark by the time they make it back home.

And it's strange because it's not that late and Cindy would never allow them to come home to an empty house. If she had to suddenly leave she would have gone to the playground to get them. What's even stranger, at least from her point of view, is that Paul (her foster-dad) isn't there either. Even if Cindy had to leave without being able to tell them, surely Paul would be here? But he isn't, nobody is – at least not when they first arrive – and the house is engulfed in darkness. The house – which already looks slightly scary – looks ever worse when it's completely dark, like it's lost all its live. Mss. Hudson, their neighbor from three houses away – who's extremely annoying even Emma can tell that – is suddenly there telling them that Cindy fell down the stairs and hurt herself and Paul had driven her to the hospital and asked her to tell them to wait for them, he should be back in half an hour.

(And Emma heard something in her voice, something she didn't understand until much later. It was, she would later realize, an accusing tone, as if Mss. Hudson had already decided what had happened. That Paul had hurt Cindy and that the kids were lucky they weren't home and, considering social services showed up the next day to take her and Thomas away, she had already contacted the authorities.)

She'd offered to stay with them but Thomas had assured her they would be alright and ushered her inside. The house was in disarray, which was odd because Cindy always made sure it looked presentable at least, papers were lying everywhere, stools were turned over and there was blood (at least Emma assumes it was blood she still kind of hopes it wasn't) on the bottom of the stairs. Thomas had started to gather the papers but they flew out of his hands just as soon as he picked them up, the lights flickered and the doors opened much faster than they had ever done before. Carla was standing at the top of the stairs, screaming and apparently Thomas could finally see her too though he didn't exactly seem to like it. She hadn't been this scared of Carla since that first night. The sound was so terrible that it took her a while before she realized what Carla was screaming but she has never been able to forget it.

"You can't leave me! You can't, you can't, you can't! You have to stay here!"

(Emma didn't understand what she was saying, she didn't know until much later that Cindy and Paul had finally gotten enough. That they couldn't deal with the strangeness of the house anymore and had decided to move and Carla, who for the first time in God knows how long, finally had a friend didn't want that. She wanted Emma to stay with her and so she'd somehow thrown Cindy down the stairs.)

Emma thinks later, much later, that Thomas's mistake had been in trying to get her _out _of the house. She doesn't think, even now after so many years, that Carla would have hurt them if they'd stayed. But Thomas had been scared and he'd wanted to protect her and so he'd tried to get her out. The door had locked before them and, in the end, Thomas and she had ended up in one of the corners, huddled together while Carla advanced on them. And then, suddenly, it was over, something had stopped it (later she learned it was something made of iron but back then it seemed like the man that suddenly showed up had just scared her away.)

"It's alright, everything is alright."

"Who are you?"

"My name is John and I came to protect you. It's alright you can come out now."

"Is she gone?" (Emma had thought later that her voice had sounded so small that it seemed like it came from a much younger child.)

"For now."

"So she's going to come back?"

"Don't worry; I'm going to make sure she doesn't hurt anyone. But I need you to go outside and go sit with my sons in the car while I take care of it ok."

"Is it really a ghost sir?"

"Yes."

In the car outside Dean and Sam had been sitting in the backseat (Sam had been asleep but Dean had still been wide awake.) Here's what she remembers through her fear: the car was old and there was rock salt everywhere – Dean told her later that it would protect them – and Thomas had insisted on her sitting with Dean while he sat in the front seat to somehow protect her (she's not sure he could have.) She doesn't really remember much of what came after that just that Dean had distracted her with tales and games and carried her through her fear and, eventually, she got so calm she fell asleep. She was woken up by John telling them everything was alright now and Carla would never bother them again and he also said that their lives would go back to normal now. (He was wrong about that, Mss. Hudson had made sure of that, and the next day the social worker came to take her away.)

Before he left he told them that if they ever ran into a ghost again they should use rock salt to protect themselves.

Dean gave her a necklace and told her it would protect her.

She has no idea how but she never threw it away.


	2. Chapter 2

Emma had learned, as a young child (after the Jameson's actually) that good things in her live never stuck around.

Her life in the foster system had taught her that, that no matter how good things seemed to be everything could (and usually would) change in an instant. Still despite that when she'd finally gotten out of the system (as in when she'd finally had enough of the last home she'd ended up in and just ran away ) she'd still had some ideal of the life she wanted. She still wanted to find a family and somebody to love, perhaps friends to hang out with and somewhere to build a new life (in any way possible.) Perhaps that's why when she met Neal she stuck around to get to know him, perhaps that's why she let her guard down, perhaps that's why she started trusting him. Now, sitting in her jail cell two weeks from being released, she knows she shouldn't have, she knows he was a cowardly bastard who didn't deserve any of her trust or love but back then he'd seemed so nice, so good, so made for her. (And perhaps he had been, perhaps he truly had loved her, perhaps he had meant it when he told her he wanted to build a life in Tallahassee with her but that had gone away the second he got his hands on those watches.)

She'd gotten used to the routine of jail after a while.

(And alright it wasn't actually jail, just juvie, but she doesn't think that distinction ever mattered.)

In fact she'd gotten so used to being in here (where there were rules and always somebody there to tell her what she was supposed to do) that she was afraid to get out, while at the same time she couldn't wait to leave this place. Because the thing was out there she'd be all alone, out there would be nobody to hold her hand. The temptation to be like she had been before – stealing things and living on the outside of society – would be too great but she wouldn't do it, not really, because she never wanted to end up in a place like this again. (Mostly though mostly it was because if she really concentrated she could still hear her little boy crying and she could still feel the way he felt in her arms. And she wanted to be the kind of person he could be proud of even if in reality the change she ever saw him again was incredibly small.)

She was let out on a Wednesday, she'll never forget it, and outside of the jail she'd found her car.

There are times that Emma wonders if Neal send her the car because once upon a time he'd loved her (or at least pretended to) and he wanted her to have something that would remind her of him or because he felt guilty for what he'd done and he felt that she should have at least _something. _(He'd never really liked the car, Emma knows he'd thought it was useful but if he could have gotten a different car, a better one, he would have done it in an instant. It had been her who'd loved the car and she had been the reason they'd kept it. Perhaps that was the real reason why he gave her the car, because he knew she'd loved it.) A part of her, the part that hated Neal for letting her go to prison for his mistakes, wanted to get rid of the car, just sell it and use the money to build a new life. But she really did love the car and it would be useful to have one, it would mean she would always have _something. _

She'd turned left at the end of the road, she's still not sure why.

(Sometimes she wonders what would have happened if she'd turned to the right, it would probably mean she'd never meet Dean again.)

* * *

Sometimes he hates Sam for leaving; sometimes he hates his father for making that the only available option.

Mostly he hates himself for allowing Sam to slip away.

The thing is, and this is the truth, it's not that he really minded that Sam went to college; it's just that he never imagined that his brother going to college signified the end of it all. He'd never imagined it meant he would never talk to his brother again (alright he did talk to his brother but it was only sporadically), that it would mean his father would be losing his mind and he certainly didn't expect to find himself all alone in an old town dealing with a haunting. It's not that he minded hunting alone, he actually lovedthe moments he was alone, but it didn't mean he wanted to be alone forever. His dad had decided, a few weeks after Sam left that they were making themselves crazy staying together, that going their separate ways for a few hunts would be good for them. Dean had objected, of course he had, but his father had been adamant they should do it and Dean had listened – and he'd never told him that he'd somehow known in that moment that if they went their separate ways they would never hunt together again, but he'd let him go anyway.

And now here he was in this ridiculous little town trying to figure out who the ghost was.

The thing is when he'd first arrived it had seemed like an easy hunt, even his father had said so, just a simple haunted motel and several families that had already been harmed because of the vengeful spirit. Some had moved, some had been killed and some had ended up in the hospital. At first glance it had seemed logical: all those harmed had been husbands and all those husbands had been cheating on their wives, logically Dean went with the idea that the ghost was that of a woman who had been murdered by her husband's lover. So he'd found out where she was buried, he'd dug up the bones and he'd lit them on fire and for a moment it had seemed that everything was solved. But the next morning another man that had been killed by a ghost and suddenly he was back to square one. He wanted to call Sam and use his brain to figure it out, he wanted to call his dad for back-up but he couldn't because all those options were gone now.

This was the truth: he really needed back-up; he really needed someone to work with.

(Perhaps he could see if there was a hunter somewhere who needed a partner?)

But for now he had to fix-it on his own and the only way to really do that was to stay at the motel and hope the ghost would show itself.

Well it _seemed _like a good idea at the time.

* * *

Emma really disliked small towns and yet, at the same time she loved them.

The thing about small towns, the annoying thing, was that everybody knew everybody and as such a new person would stick out. The other thing was that, and this was something she'd learned in her time with Neal, was that people in small towns were also more likely to help her. At least she had some money, enough to stay in a motel for the night and get some food in the morning though it probably wouldn't get her much more than that – she'd found the cash in the glove compartment and she doesn't know if Neal left it there on purpose, so she would have something to live on the first day she got out of prison, or if it was money that had been left behind before that. She could have driven on; she knows that, it might even have been a better idea, to stretch out the money for as long as it would go. But she was tired and she didn't want to spend her first free night in a car so she stopped at the first motel she found.

Perhaps it was fate; most likely it was just a coincidence.

Her idea had been to stay the night, not talk to anyone and drive away in the morning, after getting some breakfast first. Well it's like they say: the best-laid plans… That night, at around three, somebody screamed and she knows, she knows, it would have been a far better idea to stay in her room, to never get up and definitely to never look out the window. But the screaming reminded her of something – and she didn't realize until later that it reminded her of the way Carla had screamed at her – and she'd felt the need to get up and look out the window. It was a ghost, definitely, a woman she thinks (brown hair, maybe, not too tall and wearing simple clothes and so angry, angrier than Carla had ever been) and some guy on the ground before her. And then another guy swinging a tire arm and getting the ghost to go away but the one on the ground was already dead. He'd looked at her then, realizing she'd seen it all, and he'd made towards her but then other lights had gone on and he'd run (not that she blamed him it's not like he could explain how the other guy had died.)

Her idea had been to just leave the next morning and she would have if she hadn't seen the car. She hadn't seen it last night; she hadn't been looking for it anyway and even if she had seen it she's not sure she would have made the connection. But it was there and now that she had seen the ghost it suddenly meant so much more: the same car she had once hidden in so long ago. And the thing is she still didn't want to get involved, she still didn't want to know but if it w_as _the same car than the people that had once saved her were _here. _And even though she swore to herself she would never trust anyone again, even if she had decided to live alone for a while the idea of re-meeting the boy she had once played with or the man who had once saved her. Besides the ghost had killed someone and if she didn't tell this other man what she had seen he might never been able to catch the ghost. (This was the strange thing about her: she could _always _see ghost, in detail, even when nobody else could, even when everybody else saw nothing but a faint outline of what could, potentially, be a person. She's not sure what that means at all.)

So instead of leaving, instead of trying to get away she leans against what she hopes is his car and wait.

It's not long before he comes out – and he certainly looks hotter in the daylight – and he looks shocked to find her leaning against his car, probably because there really shouldn't be a way she knew which car was his.

"Good morning."

"Morning, I've been waiting for you."

"I can see that, I was going to sit outside your door and wait for you to come out, though to tell you the truth I was expecting for you to be long gone. Most people freak out when they see something like that, most would head for the hills as fast as they could."

"I'm not most people."

"I can see that I have to ask though how the hell did you know which car was mine?"

"Well I suppose there would be no real reason for you to recognize me or even remember me. But I recognized the car and since you're not an old man and definitely not a teenager I'm going to go with you're Dean right?"

"How did you know that? You a hunter, did my dad send you or something?"

"No, not even close. You once saved my life, or your dad once got a rid of a ghost for me. I'm Emma, Emma Swan;"

"Of course the girl from the old house on the corner of the street, I remember you. And yeah I'm Dean although how am I supposed to know you're telling the truth?"

Well she supposes that is an excellent question, how is she supposed to convince him?

"Well you once gave me this," Emma answered while taking out the amulet "You told me it would protect me."

"Yeah, I really did believe that at the time, I should point out that I was just a child."

"So it wouldn't have protected me?"

"Honestly? I have absolutely no idea. So Emma, darling, about that ghost last night, think you can describe it?"

"Yeah, I saw it pretty clearly. But I am wondering how are you planning on finding it?"

"I was going to look through town records to find out who died in the motel, try to find a picture and see which one looks most like the one you describe."

"Wouldn't it be much easier if I went you? I mean no matter how well I describe the ghost you would never be able to really recognize the ghost since you know, you didn't see it."

"I can't just take you with me; you've never gone hunting before."

"No but that doesn't mean I can't help, nor that I don't know how to defend myself. It's a ghost right well I have a tire arm and rock salt in the trunk."

"You certainly know what you want, alright why not; let's go get in the car."

"Euhm, yeah no I'll be taking my own car for now. And, Dean, I am also going to need breakfast first."

"Now you want me to buy you breakfast?"

"Well as long as you're offering."

"Just follow me."

Maybe she really shouldn't have, maybe the smarter plan would have been just to drive away but the thing was she trusted him – she had always been able to tell when somebody was lying to her after all (although that hadn't really worked with Neal but then she's not sure if he'd ever truly lied to her, part of her thinks – the part that still cares about him despite her best efforts and wants to believe he at least once loved her – that he hadn't decided to sell her out until after he realized how much the watches would make.) Besides he was awfully cute (and she did somewhat know him.) Not to mention the fact that hunting ghosts seems much cooler than just driving around.

* * *

Here's a truth: he never actually expects to see them again.

Not the kids from the many schools he attended, not the girls he slept with and certainly not the people he saved. Other hunters, yes those he expected to see again – hell sometimes he even talked to some of them if he needed specific help – but the people he or his father saved? No those he somehow never expected to see again. He thinks that might be because somehow he's always believed that once they saved them from whatever it was that was haunting them their lives would go back to normal. He might have thought, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he might see them again if he ever ended up in their town again (but that was why hunters try never to go to the same town twice, that an all the angry cops) but running into them in a random hotel, no that possibility had never crossed his mind. Truthfully he never really thought about them again, he just imagined them having a perfect life and then forgot about them, but he always remembered them.

Like Emma: he remembers liking her, playing with her on a playground and talking to her in the car.

She certainly turned out hot, not that he ever expected she wouldn't, just the kind of girl he would date in fact. He liked her, she wasn't afraid to talk back, she wasn't afraid to come with him even though she'd just seen a ghost (for the second time in her live) and he was impressed by the fact that she refused to get in the car with him (to protect herself probably.) He bought her breakfast in the first diner he found and he listened as she describes the ghost (in a hell of a lot detail.) She was also the one who managed to find all the information on the ghost, though to be fair it was mostly a coincidence since they spend most afternoons going through dozens of newspapers and she was simply the one who in the end finally found the right article.

In the end he hadn't been that far off: the woman in question was murdered by her husband in that motel because he wanted to leave her for another woman. Thankfully she was buried in the same cemetery as the first one which meant he at least knew where it was.

For the record: Emma let him do all the digging.

"So let me get this straight you seriously dig up graves?"

"Yeah."

"To set the bones on fire?"

"It's the only way to really get rid of a ghost."

"Seriously? What if someone sees you or the cops show up?"

"You run and try to make sure you're not arrested; besides that's why you're here to keep an eye out and make sure nobody catches us, now keep watch."

"Alright, alright."

"So what happens if it rains?"

"What?"

"I mean if it rains you won't be able to make fire so how do you burn the bones then?"

"You know, I don't know, I've never even thought about it, I mean it's never actually happened to me. I don't know probably just wait for the rain to stop and then dig up the grave. Now seriously keep watch and be silent please."

"But…"

"If you have any questions you can ask them later."

"Fine, I will."

* * *

The next morning they sat on the hood of his car just outside of town – her car parked a few meters away – after making sure the ghost was _really_ gone.

"So what did you think about hunting a ghost?"

"Well it's definitely not what I expected or imagined. Are all ghosts like that? I mean are they all terrible?"

"Most are, actually pretty much all the ones I've met are vengeful spirits. Why?"

"I remember Clara you know, the ghost your father saved us from and she was scared and alone and she was so happy to have a friend. She only got angry after she realized Cindy and Paul were thinking about moving us away."

"Well not all are angry, not all have done something, in fact most haven't done anything but they all are here for a reason. By burning their bones, whether or not their dangerous, we set them free and allow them to move on to whatever comes next, if there is something of course. And that's a good thing."

"I suppose. I still think it's gross you dig up graves though. So are you travelling alone now?"

"Yeah, my brother got into college and my father is hunting somewhere else that reminds me I should really call him."

"Isn't that dangerous? Hunting alone?"

"A little, I do really need a partner though, you want to come?"

"I'm not a hunter; I don't know anything about it."

"Everybody's got to learn, I could teach you. Unless you don't want to come, you don't have to. I mean I understand if you want to go home."

"That car is my home, it's all I have. I've got nowhere else to go, I'll come with."

"Well alright then, here's to us."


	3. Chapter 3

There was something different about working as a team.

The thing about hunting alone, something Dean realized quite quickly, is that while one could always do what one wanted there was also the drawback of always being, you know alone. There was never somebody to talk things over, never somebody that could tell when you were being simply stupid and never somebody there as back-up. Now of course Emma wasn't perfect – if she was things would have gotten boring quite quickly – she didn't know a lot about hunting in general, which wasn't that surprising since she didn't grow up in it, but she was a quick study. The physical parts – learning to fight, to use a gun and more importantly running away quickly without being caught which was a skill all on its own – came far easier to her than everything else but that might have been because he himself enjoyed those parts more than the researching. They worked perfectly together which was awesome and he really, really liked her.

There were some parts that weren't perfect of course.

The problem with having one hunter who was excellent (if he did say so himself) at the hunting and fighting part but did not like the researching and wasn't wonderful and another one that was just learning is that there was some parts of hunting that didn't go so well. Most notably the research part, Dean thinks, really, that the problem with the research not always going well was that his first instinct was to call Sam but he no longer could and that _hurt. _Emma could sense it too, she'd asked about his brother only once and though he'd tried to sound cheerful when he answered it, apparently, didn't work, she'd been able to see right through it (to the extent that she'd stopped asking him about his brother.) The point was that everything was different now and that though some parts were great now – most notably Emma - others weren't and he had to get used to that and it took some time.

But he and Emma seemed made to be partners.

The first time he kissed her was after one of their most eventful hunts – which had ended with a chase by the police – underneath a bridge in the middle of nowhere. Her hair was filled with cobwebs and her clothes was in disarray, she looked winded and she was limping (she must have hurt herself at some point and he almost hit himself for not noticing) but he swears she'd never looked more beautiful than in that moment. They'd been hunting together for a few weeks by then and he'd sworn to himself that he wouldn't hurt her, that he wouldn't rush her because he knew somebody had broken her heart (she'd told him briefly about her time in jail and just like she did with the subject of Sam he never brought it up again) but when he saw her in that moment he _knew _he had to kiss her, so he did.

And he'd been right to wait because the moment was _perfect. _

* * *

The thing about living together with someone twenty four seven was that eventually, whether you wanted to or not, you knew everything about each other.

At least the little things, like the kind of the things the other person liked to ear or the annoying little habits that made you want to rip your hair out. But the thing is, and this is something that Emma had learned a long time ago – back when she and Neal were busy just driving through the country – eventually even the annoying little things become not so bad. You get used to it, you get over it and eventually, someday, they won't make her want to rip her hair out. But she suspects that's still a long way away. The other things, the important things – the emotional scars that mark their souls – those are the kind of things you can keep quiet, the kind of things that only come out when they decide it will. (Like Sam who leaves for Stanford and Neal who leaves her in jail.)

(What he does tell her, what she does tell him, are strangely enough the moments that changed their lives and the moments that hurt the most. He tells her of his mother who dies in the fire as a yellow-eyed demon laughs in the corner – who doesn't actually say that but that's how Emma keeps imagining it – and she tells him about her parents who left her to die at the side of the road. They never actually talk about this.)

The first thing he teaches her is how to use a gun, he tells her it's her most important weapon because she can fire it from far away without putting herself in danger. It won't always help but it's handy, he tells her. She kind of likes it to, the way he teaches her, him standing close to her, his arms around her, his hands on hers.

It's thrilling.

He kisses her under a bridge in the town he almost gets her arrested in – alright so the fact that they almost got arrested is actually her fault but she suspects that the reasons she blames him has more to do with Neal then with what actually happened. (Unlike Neal he doesn't use her as a distraction though, unlike Neal he makes sure she's going with him and she has a feeling that if it came to it Dean would tell her to run while he became the distraction.) She must look terrible though, cobwebs in her hair, her clothes are wrinkled and he doesn't look much better though apparently he's somehow managed to miss getting hurt. (And why would he twist his ankle, considering how long he's been in this lifestyle – far too long if she's honest but at least his father didn't abandon him at the side of the road – it's doubtful this was the first time he had to run away from something.) The thing is she freaked out when she saw the cops mostly because she'd only just gotten out of juvie and she had no desire to go back (the last time it had cost her so much, her freedom, her love, her sense of being and, most importantly, her son –the one thing, the one detail of her life she still has to share with Dean but she simply doesn't know _how._)

The point is he kisses her under a bridge and later he carries her back to the car.

* * *

His father calls on a Wednesday, way too early in the morning.

He asks how he is and if his hunt is finished and Dean tells him everything is alright and that of course his hunt is finished, does he want to meet again. (He always asks but his dad always has another hunt for him to go on. Dean just asks because it's expected of him really.) This is what he doesn't tell his father, but his father also doesn't ask – not that he knows he should. He doesn't tell him about Emma, doesn't share the fact that he's found a hunting partner he's slowly falling in love with, doesn't tell him that he's trusted someone even though his father practically taught him never to trust someone he hasn't known for years and even then you still shouldn't trust them completely. He doesn't tell him that the hunt they're talking about, the one that brought him to this ridiculous little town, actually finished three days ago and that he and Emma had just been hanging out (which is something he's never done before and he doesn't know why.)

His father doesn't ask and he never tells, sometimes he wonders if his father would have wanted to know, he likes to believe he would have though.

His father tells him there's a hunter that needs his help in a town not that far away, he doesn't know the other man himself his father tells him but pastor Jim knows him (or at least of him), his name is Richie and he's having some trouble with a very strange house. Dean tells him that of course they'll go and before he can ask him where he is his father has already hung up.

"Another hunt?"

"There's a hunter that needs our help. Let's go."

"Alright."

* * *

The first time he meets Richie Dean isn't exactly impressed.

He doesn't seem like the kind of hunter Dean has gotten used to, in fact he seems like the kind of person that would get himself killed five minutes into a fight (and he's pretty sure he's being generous.) Despite that the kid, because he is a kid – although to be fair he and Emma aren't exactly that much older – is incredibly likeable. He makes jokes all the time, doesn't seem to mind when Dean isn't impressed with him and flirts with Emma constantly, but not in a way that makes Dean want to kill him. Dean can see Richie becoming a close friend, hell he can even see hunting with him, but what he doesn't understand is how the other man became a hunter let alone survived for so long. That is of course until the research part comes in and he comes to one realization: he might not look like something, he might not scare people and Dean is pretty sure he definitely won't win in a fight but in the research department he's pretty much a _genius. _Seriously Richie can look up something in less time than Sam ever did and he knows things Dean's pretty sure even his dad doesn't know and if he doesn't know something he just calls Bobby. (Dean remembers Bobby, he liked him, hell he's pretty sure he loved the older man but then one day he'd had a fight with his dad and just like that he'd never seen him again. It's beginning to turn into a pattern really.)

He still doesn't understand why the other man would even think about becoming a hunter.

(He discovers, about six months later, that Richie had become a hunter because a demon had killed his parents and then, years later, another monster had attacked his little sister. She was, apparently, still in a coma and he visited her every month. Or at least he tried to.)

The thing is despite having done a hell of a lot of research and despite having been in the town for at least three weeks Richie still hasn't figured out what the hell is going on. It's not a ghost, he tells them, or if it is nobody has ever seen it and there have been no deaths in the house so there's no reason why there _should_ be a haunting. But the problem is a haunting is the only thing that actually makes s_ense. _Here's what Dean discovers later: there's another reason he called for help. Usually when it's just a ghost he can deal with it but when it's more he needs help. Richie is basically one big klutz, if there's anything in the vicinity that he can trip over he will accomplish it. And Dean had been right about his earlier assessment: the man won't survive a fight with a demon. The thing is Dean is pretty sure from the moment he meets him that the other man is going to get himself killed someday but he can't talk the other man out of being a hunter. He does convince him to hunt together because you know safety in numbers _right?_

* * *

Emma is strongly reminded of Carla during Richie's explanation of the problem.

The house at the end of the street that just _feels _wrong somehow, the house that looks older but isn't, the strange color on the front door, the flickering of the lights, all of it. It's almost like she's somehow found herself back in the beginning, back in the house with the family she had almost called her own. But Richie is sure it couldn't a ghost because nobody had died in the house and though Emma asked there were no rumors about any deaths either. It simply doesn't make sense. She can tell Richie is getting frustrated and she suspects she would be frustrated too if she were in his shoes. Stuck in a little town trying to finish a case with no idea what's going on and no way to leave because what if something is going on and somebody gets hurt? It's got to be incredibly frustrating.

She doesn't tell him about Carla though; she doesn't know him enough for that one.

She does tell Dean, later that night in their motel room, and he listens to her and tells her he agrees, it does sound the same. The problem is however that he also agrees with Richie: there is no reason why the house should be haunted; nobody had died in it after all. She asked him then if he knew what had happened so long ago, if he knew who Carla was and what the actual story was. He didn't and though he told her he could call his father and ask he doesn't actually sound as if he believes his father remembers. Emma figures it's something about her past she's never actually going to figure out (and truthfully there are far too many things in her past she doesn't know about.)

She doesn't ask him anything else, there's no real point.

* * *

They go the house the next day, it's the stupidest thing he has _ever _done.

(Considering his life _that _is certainly an accomplishment.)

The point is the house is strange, it's the strangest thing he's ever gone through and the thing is Richie and Emma are completely right: it feels, looks and sounds like a haunting. But nobody has died here (and they went back through the paperwork as long as they could once they actually made it out of the house but they never found anyone who died in or near that stupid house.) The lights flickered on and of constantly, doors open and close, the colors around him shift and, the most annoying thing, somehow the house itself almost seemed to change. He's not sure if this is really what's happening or if it's just his brain that is making everything worse – and Emma not knowing very much about hauntings in general and Richie falling over anything in sight definitely isn't helping.

It takes eighteen hours for them to get out of the bloody house (he never tells his father it's far too embarrassing.)

Later they have dinner together in a diner, after exhausting every angle possible and coming to the conclusion that as long as nobody ever enters the house everything will be alright so of course they burn down the house.

"So what are you going to do now Richie?"

"Not sure."

"Do you always travel alone?"

"Yeah, I like being alone."

"You sure?" Emma intersects "You could hang out with us."

"You sure you want me around?"

Emma looks at _him _for the answer like he's in charge – and he is but he likes to think about it as a partnership and as such he believes she has just as much right to say something about it. Of course considering she was the one who offered in the first place it might simply be that she wanted to know what he thought too.

"Yeah sure, stick around. It could be fun."

(It's probably the best idea he's had yet, with him being a hunter and Richie doing the research and Emma learning they make the perfect team. Even though he misses his brother and his father hanging out with Richie and Emma does make it better.)


	4. Chapter 4

You'd think Dean would have learned by now after years of hunting with his father – and the past two years with both Emma and Richie – that no matter how much time you spend actually planning something you should accept that something will, more than definitely, go wrong.

Especially if somebody is stupid enough to decree it an _easy _hunt.

Dean concedes however that Emma had been right about one thing when she said it: it really _should _have been an easy hunt. They knew whose bones to dig up, they knew where they were buried and they'd taken care of everything. It should have been fine and it probably would have been if it hadn't been for the cops (and even after so many years Emma still tensed up when she saw the police, Dean figures it's because she got arrested once.) Sometimes Dean wonders – as he supports Emma who's bleeding from a head wound (and thankfully Emma doesn't seem to be that hurt it just bleeds an awful lot) and tries to figure out how the hell he's going to get Richie out of jail – if his father ever managed to get himself into situations like these and if he did how the hell he managed to get out of them and hide it from his children. But then, despite all the years, Dean's not quite sure if his father ever worked with someone beside Pastor Jim or one of his sons.

It should have all been over in under an hour.

But really, the truth is, that Dean should have seen this coming because Richie might be his best friend and he's an absolute genius when it comes to research (only Sammy is better than him really and he suspects he only thinks htat because Sammy is his brother) he's, still after all these years, terrible at the execution. (That's the number one rule really: make Richie come up with a plan, do not make him a _part_ of the plan.) Seriously even though he knows why Richie became a hunter he still believes it's a the worst idea the other guy has ever had and Dean is half convinced every time he gives the other guy a gun he he'll shoot himself or Dean (by accident of course). It's not that he doesn't like hanging out with the other man nor that he would want to change their dynamic in any way – and he knows Emma doesn't want to change it either – but he thinks everybody might be better off if Richie were to stick to the research and let him and Emma do the hunting, but the other man would never do this. (Mostly because he and Richie have one main thing in common: they feel to guilty knowing other people are risking their lives for them, they'd never be able to sit still.)

Though he really should have seen it coming he'll consent one thing: it's not _all _Richie's fault.

Technically seen most of it was Emma's fault.

It wasn't really her fault it's just that she'd been the one to do the research on where the man was buried and as such she should have known that there would be others in the cemetery with the same name. The thing is they'd known that for some reason this goddamn family had decided to name every man in the family had the same name – and seriously what the hell was that all about? He knows that he himself is names after his grandmother of all people and his brother is named after his grandfather but he's never actually understood that either. He would never consider naming his children after his parents, in the event that he ever has any of course. (His mother's name would hurt far too much and his father's name would just be weird.) And even if he would understand that he still thinks that after two generations of family members with the same exact name would be enough wouldn't it?

But no this goddamn family with the ghost has twelve generations of men with the same name, buried side by side in the same cemetery.

Still, even after they saw that, they still thought that somehow it would all turn out alright: all they needed to do was find the grave with the right dates engraved on the stones.

It sounded easy, they were definitely wrong.

Because for some reason that none of them could figure out everyone in this family had decided that dates on gravestones was apparently not for them. It was Emma who got the idea to check every gravestone and then somehow try to figure out which one was older and as such, by chance really, figure out which grave was the right one. (Personally Dean thought it would be a much better plan to just dig up all the graves and simply burn everything because then at least they would be sure they got the ghost the first time and they wouldn't have to come back again. But you know Emma's idea was probably more practical.)

She was so sure she'd picked the right grave.

She'd been wrong.

Because when they'd made it back to the town the ghost was still haunting the house.

So they'd gone back and that was when everything went bad.

First Richie, who'd gone back to the car because they'd forgotten something, had gotten himself arrested. It wasn't the first time somebody got arrested – though it still freaked Emma out – but it wasn't really that big of a problem because every hunter had an easy way to at least try to get out of these things: Bobby. Even though Dean still hadn't really talked to him – still convinced the older man probably hated him as well as his father – the man had still helped him a lot (which was probably an indication that he was wrong but you know that was too much to think about.)

And then Emma had gotten hurt.

(In the end while Emma tried to get her wound to stop bleeding Dean had just dug up all the graves and burned everything.)

It took him almost ten hours to get Richie out of jail.

To be fair he had first taken Emma to the hospital and waited until she could leave.

* * *

One day everything begins to change.

The thing is Emma doesn't really like change, though she's pretty much used to it by now – her entire childhood had been filled with one change after another after all – and whenever it comes up she has the incense need to run away. The thing is she's never had so much stability – not even with Neal – never had a man like Dean who loves her so much and never had a friend like Richie that sticks around (and really by now he's more like a really annoying brother.) But she's learned that good things never stay the same way and that no matter how much you might want to stop it change will always come. It begins with Richie who finds a clue to whomever killed his mother while, at the same time, Dean got a phone call from his father because he thinks _he's _found something important.

They don't actually want to split up but both events are important and if they don't split up they risk losing one of the leads.

They talk about it all night long but eventually they decide – all of them together even though Emma still wants to go with Dean – that she should go with Richie because he definitely needs the back-up more. Besides they're afraid that if Richie went off to face what destroyed his family he wouldn't be thinking and just attack without a plan. Richie has enough trouble surviving a hunt _with_ a plan and Dean doesn't want to know what would happen if he went in without one and without back-up and Emma can't help but agree (even though she wished, desperatly, that she couldn't.) It still doesn't feel right because Dean too might be facing something terrible and he too might need back-up but perhaps more in the emotional department. But this is the plan and there's nothing she can do about it.

Dean calls three weeks later with the message that his father has gone hunting and hasn't been back in a while and he's starting to really get freaked out. He needs help and he knows he told her that she should stay with Richie but it's freaking him out and, he tells her, he went to get his brother for back-up because he couldn't reach her immediately but that isn't going so well either. And that, that's when their team falls apart completely, that's when their whole life – the life she'd almost felt would last forever – fades away. Because Richie can't leave a lead and he's not sure when he'll be able to get back and Dean has gone and gotten his brother and…

Life changes, there's nothing you can do about it.

Even if it sucks you have to go on.

Richie promises he'll keep in touch, call every day (but eventually that fades away, no matter how much they would like it to stay the same.)

* * *

Sam doesn't actually remember Emma.

Dean isn't really surprised by it, Sam had just been six years old when the events in Emma's house happened, there was no real way he could have remembered her. He was kind of shocked though – at least if the look on his face was any indication and if Dean could still read his little brother – that Dean had a girlfriend to introduce, that sometime in the past few years Dean had managed to get his own life (and Dean tries not to be hurt by the fact that his brother didn't even consider he could get a normal life.) Dean still wants Sammy to stay, he wants him to stick around but he's no longer so alone, no longer abandoned and if Sam wants to return to his life than Dean can deal with that. (But for the love of God he hopes they keep in touch this time.)

He should never have asked him for help.

But then how could he have known how it all would end? How could he have known that getting Sam would end up in Jessica getting harmed? Dean doesn't really think not getting Sam would have made a difference because he learns later, much later, that Azazal the demon and all the other demons involved in the plan wanted Sam to live and they wanted him to be hunting, no matter what. Jessica had, in the end, been nothing but collateral damage and there was nothing that Dean could do about that, not anymore. And Dean couldn't do anything but watch as Sam deteriorated, as he lost himself in his grief, as he left behind the home he'd build for himself (surrounded by friends) and joined them on the hunt for their father and the demon that had stolen everything from them. The thing is Dean might have wished for this for a long time – forever actually even though he'd teamed up with both Emma and Richie he'd still wished that he and Sam would, if not hunt together again at least be brothers again – but he didn't want it to happen like _this. _

(Sometimes Sam looks at him and Emma and he thinks he can almost see resentment in his eyes. Like he can't understand why Emma is allowed to live, like he can't understand why Dean is allowed happiness and he isn't. And the truth is Dean can't understand it either but he is immensely happy that Emma is alive.)

* * *

Emma has never actually known how to deal with grief.

The thing about changing families so many times and not getting attached is that there are some things she simply never learned. Like sharing with others and helping someone deal with important stuff. If it was Dean, whom she loves or Richie whom she knows quite well it might not be so difficult. Because she'd known them and even though she still wouldn't have an idea how to deal with grief she'd know how to deal with _them_ and that would be enough. But she didn't know Sam – bar their brief first meeting which he doesn't seem to recall, not that she thought that was strange and truthfully she doesn't remember that much about hmi either – and so she didn't know how to help him.

She does like him and he seems to like her but it's not exactly enough.

It's the strangest thing following a man cross-country and being the only one in the car without a personal investment. He's not her father; it's not her mother or girlfriend that was murdered. Her only connection is Dean, her only link is her boyfriend and it's not that she wants to go but it makes her feel like she doesn't belong. Here's the truth: it makes her think of her own past, it makes her think of the parents who decided to abandon her to her death at the side of the road. Not for the first time she wonders about them, not for the first time she wonders what would make a person leave their child at the side of a busy road. Sometimes she thinks about looking for them, for answers, but she doesn't really think she wants to know, she doesn't think it will do her good. But now that she follows two brothers in their own car (because she'd refused to leave behind her own car, especially after all she had gone through) it makes her wonder more, it makes her think.

The idea is growing in the back of her mind.

The only real problem is that, unlike Sam and Dean, she has no idea where to even start.


	5. Chapter 5

The lake was beautiful and extremely _peaceful. _

The thing is Emma has never really been one for nature, it's not that she didn't like it – at times nature could be very beautiful and the peace it at times inspired was the most wonderful thing – it's just that she'd never really seen the attraction. She couldn't really understand why people went out of their way to go camping or spend as much time as they could just around nature. Emma herself preferred the city, she preferred the lights and the sounds and the fact that no matter where you went a big city was always _alive. _If she could have chosen – if some far of day she and Dean might decide to settle down – she would go for New York or another big town, somewhere where silence would never be a problem. She suspects it's because when there's silence, she would always be able to hear herself think and she would have to face her demons (Neal and her little boy and her parents who left her to die at the side of the road) but in a big city she felt the sounds might drown out her own thoughts. (Dean doesn't seem to really care either way but that might be because he's used to living pretty much _everywhere.)_

Still despite her own feelings she couldn't deny that the lake was absolutely _beautiful._

And it looked so peaceful, so serene, that it seemed impossible that not that long ago people had actually died there, been murdered (she supposes that's the word) by the ghost that hid in its waters. The thing is she still thinks it's slightly strange that it was a ghost; she'd actually suspected it would be some kind of a sea monster – and, if she's completely honest, she might have even been wishing for it – but a she'd never suspected it would be a ghost. And even if she had – and she wasn't the only one Dean and Sam were also slightly taken back when it turned out to be a ghost but they found it easier to accept that it was – it would never have occurred to her that it would be a _child. _She knows it's strange, and perhaps more than a little ideal, but somehow the idea of a child ghost killing people had never actually been something she'd thought would happen. Maybe it's Carla, she thinks, maybe it's the memory of the ghost of a little girl who was alone and sad and who never actually killed anyone (as far as Emma knows of course and who knows maybe Carla had killed the people that lived in the house before them, she'll never actually know.) The point is Carla never killed anyone, the only time she actually hurt someone was when she threw Cindy down the stairs after she discovered that they were thinking of moving (and that thing is Emma doesn't really know what Carla would have done if John Winchester hadn't gotten rid of her.)

But still despite all that the thought of a killer ghost child had never occurred to her.

And the thing is she feels for the poor boy, like she once felt for Carla; it must have been horrible for him to be drowned as a child, to be left in the lake all on his own. Emma doesn't know how ghost come into being, according to Dean it's usually a violent end that begins the process but Emma – who does believe in things like heaven though Dean doesn't actually appear to – doesn't understand why they just don't move on. Perhaps, she thinks later, it's because they can't move on until justice has been met (and if that's the case than there must be thousands, if not millions, of ghosts all over the world.) The thing is, even though she feels sorry for him, she can't understand why he did this, because the children of the man who lived by the lake and Lucas's father (not to mention Lucas himself) hadn't actually done anything. Neither had the little boy – the poor little boy who'd been channeling him the entire time nor she wonders, briefly, if that's what happened between her and Carla but if it is it didn't have the same effect on her than it had on Lucas. (Though she thinks, and Dean agrees, that the fact that he watched his father die probably had more to do with his silence than the ghost of the little boy.)

It's Dean however who worries her the most.

From the moment he learns Lucas watched his father die Dean is silent and there's a faraway look in his eyes that Emma can't really place at first (but later, much later, Emma realizes it was a mixture of pain and regret and longing.) And the thing is Emma knows his mother died when he was a child, Emma knows that he probably watched her die in some way – knowing your mother is trapped inside a house that is burning down must have been terrible especially for a child that young. But even though she knew she'd never really talked to him about it, mostly because he refused to talk about it himself, he preferred to hold it in and, considering Emma didn't really like to talk about her parents either, she didn't feel like she could force him. Besides she didn't know how to approach the subject and even if she did know, even if Dean himself ever decided to talk about it she wouldn't know how to deal with it, wouldn't know what to say about it. So in a way, and yes she knows how selfish it sounds, she's kind of glad he never talks about it. The first time she actually hears him mention it – by choice and not because she is stupid enough to ask – is when he sits in front of Lucas and tells him about it (and if the look on Sam's face is any indication Dean had never talked to him about it either.)It's heartbreaking to watch though and she wishes she could just hold him (or find a way to go back in time and either save his mother or comfort the poor little boy because obviously that's what he really needed at the time.)

His hands are shaking slightly, though she's not sure if someone else noticed that, and his voice breaks slightly as he talks.

* * *

The water is _freezing. _

It's not important of course, the only thing that matters at that point is that he has to save Lucas from a watery grave but still he notices it. (It's hard not to in fact it's so cold that he can't understand how somebody would even decide to swim in it by choice every bloody day.) It registers, somewhere in the back of his mind, that his brother follows him in the water but that Emma stays on the pier with Lucas's mom (and he understands why if she doesn't the other woman would probably jump in the water as well and who can blame her considering her son is about to be drowned?) Besides even if she didn't need to hold someone back it's unlikely Emma would have jumped in the water – she told him once, a long time ago back when they'd first started this entire story, that she couldn't really swim that well because nobody had really bothered to teach her and he suspects that if she had followed them in the water he might need to save her as well, so it's probably for the best that she decided not to jump in the water.

If he had been thinking about it, which he hadn't really done at the time, he would have found it strange that the ghost wasn't trying to drown him or his brother. (Probably because the ghost didn't actually want to hurt them, he just wanted to punish the boys (now man) who had killed him so long ago.) And if he had been paying any attention – to anything other than going under time and again to find Lucas – he might have seen the sheriff jump in the water, he might have seen him offer his own live, he might have been able to stop or save him but he hadn't been paying attention and as such he'd failed at saving the other man. (Later, after it's all finished both Emma and Sam will tell him, try to convince him really, in their own way that it isn't his fault, that no matter how much one tries you can't simply save everyone. But he's never really been able to deal with that, everyone he doesn't save weighs on his soul.)

But he does save Lucas and that he supposes is what really matters.

* * *

That night after everything is done and they've retired to their motel rooms – and Sam has been insistent on getting his own motel room when he can because as he says it there are some things about your brother you simply don't need to see – the things he's been avoiding thinking about finally overwhelm him.

Even though his mother had been a part of the investigation ever since his conversation with Lucas he's done his best _not _to think about it. Not to think about the terror of watching his home burn down and knowing his mother is still inside and thinking, for the longest time, that she died in the flames – he didn't discover until later, years later, that his mother had probably been dead _before _the fire but it's not like that ever made a distinction. The point is he'd tried not to think of it, to drown out the memories and pretend it wasn't affecting him (he doesn't think it was actually working though, not if the looks Emma and Sam kept shooting him when they thought he wasn't looking was any indication) but now that it's finally over he can do nothing but think of it. Now, in the darkness of the room, he can't help but think of his mom and all that happened.

And he can't stay inside anymore, he just can't. He gets up slowly, trying not to wake up Emma and makes his way to his car outside. There's something comforting about his car but right now nothing – save the mother he can never get back – will calm him right now. Briefly he thinks of driving away, of going to that lake that was so calm and watch over it, but he doesn't, he doesn't want to scare Emma when she wakes, he doesn't want to have her wake Sam and for them to start some kind of search. So instead he lies on the hood of his car and stares at the stars and tries to think of nothing – not that it works but it's at least a good try – and ignores the world around him (which considering he's a hunter might not be the _best _plan.) It works too because he doesn't hear Emma approach, in fact he doesn't realize she's actually there until her fingers entwine with his. It's not exactly a good sign that he didn't realize somebody managed to lie down beside him but since it's only Emma he's going to let it go for now.

"Hey, couldn't sleep?"

"No."

"Dean…"

"Don't."

He's not sure what he doesn't want her to do, perhaps not to ask questions about things he doesn't want to ask about or maybe he just doesn't want her to say anything. And she doesn't, she just lies beside him and places her head on his shoulder and stares at the stars just like him, eventually they fall asleep there.

(Emma never mentions it again.)

* * *

Dean once told her, way back in the beginning, that being a hunter was the most dangerous profession (if one could call it that) there was.

He'd told her that once you got in getting out seemed to be almost impossible and that eventually some day they could die, because there were demons and monsters and someday they might be too strong. Still despite him telling her that – and despite all the times they've been in danger – she'd never actually considered it could happen to them. Somehow she'd always imagined they would survive everything and that somehow they'd get the happy ending she'd been dreaming about. Yet despite that, somewhere deep inside – the part that knew Dean quite well and knew how much he wanted to save people – she'd known that Dean would get hurt someday. But somehow the idea of him getting electrocuted hadn't entered in her mind as a possibility (though him dying because he saved two kids had always been, in the back of her mind where she didn't acknowledge it, a possibility.)

She knew it wasn't good when Sam practically carried Dean to the car but somehow she'd still thought (hoped actually) that everything would turn out alright.

She didn't cry when the doctor told them Dean would more than probably die, she didn't cry when she saw Dean – though she wanted too because he looked horrible – and she didn't cry in the car as Sam drove them back to the motel. It's not until she entered the motel and sat down that she could no longer stop the tears, no longer keep her pain in check. She remembers that Sam held her as she cried what she can't remember is whether he said anything and if it did she doubts it mattered or he himself believed the words. (Somewhere in the back of her mind she realized that she should probably be comforting him as well as it was his older brother that was dying but at the time she had been unable to even contemplate it.) She doesn't know when she fell asleep but she must have because she woke three hours later to Sam talking to someone on the phone.

"How long did I sleep."

"Few hours."

"Dean?"

"Still at the hospital, I just talked to the doctor. We'll visit him later."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm trying to find a way to help him."

"You can't, you heard the doctor."

"Look we're hunters; we've seen things that shouldn't be possible. Somewhere out there there is an answer to this. Somewhere out there, there is somebody that can help Dean and I am going to find him."

"What is that?"

"It's a list of all the people I can call to get help."

"Give me half."

* * *

Sam is the one who finds the healer.

Dean is skeptical, he doesn't exactly believe this man can help him – and truthfully Emma doesn't actually believe it either. It sounds like just another crook, like somebody is using people's pain to get some money, but still at that point she was willing to try anything. She thinks that's the reason Dean went to, not because he believes it will help but because he knows that she and Sam need to try anything. And so they drive across the country to meet the person that says he can heal anything. And then it does work and she's happy (and Sam is ecstatic and even though Dean is confused she can see in his eyes that he is happy too because he didn't really want to die – but then who really does?)

That is of course until they discover somebody died so Dean could live.

(And Emma is sorry about that, she _is _but she's also happy Dean is alive it's all incredibly confusing.)


	6. Chapter 6

Meeting your boyfriend's father for the first time is always nerve-wrecking.

Meeting your boyfriend's father who has been missing for the better part of a year because he wants to protect his sons from the demon that murdered their mother is _beyond _nerve-wrecking. When that man is also an extremely paranoid hunter who sees demons that work with yellow-eyes everywhere well meeting him is practically a recipe for disaster. It strange though that, even though she's been dating and hunting with Dean for the past five years she's never actually met him. The first time she would have she'd been with Richie – whom she hasn't seen in a few years – and then every other time Dean and Sam met their father Emma had always been doing something else. (She's not sure if Dean did that on purpose or if he did it subconsciously or if it was all just a big coincidence, not that she believes in those.)

The point is its nerve-wrecking.

Most people, besides not having to deal with all of that, are also giving some sort off advance warning that they are in fact about to meet their boyfriend's father. But well considering she was left at the side of the road, had a ghost as a best friend when she was eight, has been a hunter for quite a few years and has spent the last year trying to capture a demon that really doesn't want to be captured her life isn't exactly _normal. _The first time she meets John Winchester she's standing guard outside the house Sam and Dean have just broken into and, naturally, he points a gun at her. Now of course she understand why he doesn't trust her – he doesn't know her after all – but it is a big leap to decide that just because she's standing where she is that automatically means she's working for a demon. Now if she had known who he was, which she didn't – she'd never even seen a picture of him which later seems like an extreme oversight to her– she would have been able to defend herself, to talk to him and tell him who she was so that at least he wouldn't shoot her before talkign to Dean, as it was she didn't even try.

She did however kick him in the crotch and ran inside to where Dean was.

Naturally after that unfortunate incident – which cracks Sam up and even Dean finds it amusing (and he does she can see it in his eyes) he is smart enough not to laugh about it, at least not where his father can see him – John doesn't particularly like her(though Dean does mention later that he had been impressed by the fact that she managed to get away from him.) But at least the other man was no longer trying to kill her, though he still didn't exactly trust her (in fact he was the one who insisted she'd stay at the motel while they went off to try and fight yellow-eyes. Dean argued against it but Emma gave in, she thought it would be far easier if she didn't go and in the end because she hadn't gone she did end up saving their lives.) In the end she never even talked to him, never said anything that would make her feel important.

Somehow she'd always imagined meet John Winchester would at least mean _something. _

(Perhaps it would have, perhaps if they had been able to kill yellow-eyes and lay that demon to rest and move on they would have been able to have that conversation. But Sam had been unable to shoot his father and as such the demon got away. And then of course there had been the car accident.)

* * *

She broke her arm and hit her head during the fight.

Dean had quite suddenly turned on his father, who turned out to be not his father but his father possessed by a demon, and Emma had immediately backed him up. (Sam had had more trouble with it but she supposes that was logical considering it was his father standing before him.) Yellow-eyes threw her against the wall when she tried to help – and she'd spend the rest of the fight, if one could call it that, half unconscious on the ground – she _had _seen it all but it took a while before everything sank in. This is what she remembers: John got up, slowly, and dragged Dean to the car and Sam carried her to that same car (for once she'd conceited to the fact that they should leave her car behind and pick it up later.) It was strange being carried by someone that wasn't Dean, even if this other person was Dean's brother, but she was too disoriented to walk on her own.

During the argument between John and Sam she was going in and out of consciousness and as such she didn't pay any attention to the argument. (To be fair most of their relationship seemed to be consistent of argument after argument so it wasn't exactly something strange.) She didn't see the truck, but then nobody did, and she doesn't know what happened after all that.

Just the darkness that followed.

* * *

The first time she woke alone, the world around her was slightly woozy and she lost consciousness before she could even decide to try and call a nurse.

The second time she woke the world was slightly more in focus and she was no longer alone. Sam was sitting in the chair beside her bed and she could tell, just by looking at him, that nothing was alright. It took a moment for Sam to realize she was actually awake but when he did he looked so happy to see she was alright that for a moment, a second, Emma could imagine that he'd looked so worried because _she _was the one who was hurt. But he still looked sad and she knew that it had something to do with Dean – because if it didn't, if Dean was alright even if he couldn't come here Sam would have already reassured her.

"Where's Dean."

"Emma he's hurt, he's unconscious and the doctor's aren't very optimistic. But don't worry dad and I are working on it."

"Where is he? I want to see him!"

"Emma, no don't try to get up, the doctor said you should rest."

"I don't care I want to see him!"

"Emma…"

He looked at her then for a moment as if he knew something she didn't, as if he knew something about her that was wrong. But she didn't really care and in the end she managed to convince him to get her in a wheelchair and take her to Dean's room. His father was already there, sitting by his side but he said nothing as she joined him. That's when she felt it, some presence, someone close to her, something that felt like a hand caressing her cheek (a touch filled with love and hope.) It felt like Dean, it did, and it made her feel like she was finally back home. But it couldn't be Dean because Dean was lying in the bed before her.

She still doesn't know why she'd been the only one who could feel it when Dean was nearby.

(The thing is yellow-eyes had said something that made her think, he'd said there was something about her that was different. Like she didn't belong here, like there was something wrong about her, he'd called her the one from another world, he'd told her she felt like she came from somewhere else. Dean told her later yellow-eyes was messing with them but she never actually forgot it.)

* * *

There is something incredibly _strange _and _creepy _about seeing yourself lying in a hospital bed.

He wonders, briefly, if ghosts feel like this when they see themselves lying death, but he at least he is not death, not yet. But still it's strange and disconcerting and if he was able to pass out he probably would have by now. He's not sure what he is though, he's not a ghost because his heart still beats but he's not alive either (perhaps this is how it begins, he thinks, perhaps this is the first step to the end when one is in a coma.)His father has been sitting by his bed for a while, not saying a word which seriously pisses him off by the way, and he's already been privy to one argument between his father and brother (and he can't help but agree) when Emma is finally brought to his room (and oh god he is so _happy _to see her awake and relatively alright) and he moves to stand beside her and tries to touch her face (he can't of course but he almost caresses her) and she suddenly startles looks at where he's standing as if she can somehow s_ense _he's there but then she looks back at him on the bed and he thinks it must all have been his imagination.

Tessa tells him later – and he wonders briefly if Tessa is actually her name or just the name she is using for his benefit – that this is the end and it's time to let go.

But he _can't. _

He can't leave his brother alone in this world, he can't leave his father despite all they have gone through, he can't leave Emma because she's already been left by quite enough people and he won't be another and he can't leave when he hasn't gotten justice for his mother's dead yet. And yet it doesn't seem like he will have much choice, death will claim him – Tessa tells him – whether he's ready or not. And it's not a bad way to go; it's the best in fact, because he's a hero. She wants him to come with her, leave this world and go the next, except of course he doesn't actually believe something will come after this.

But he doesn't want to be a vengeful spirit and end up harming the people he swore he'd protect.

He'll go with her, even if he's not ready, even if he doesn't want to let go, because even though he wants to stay with them he's almost too afraid to stay behind.

And then, suddenly, he's awake.

(And then his father is death and Sam is crying and Emma is holding him and not saying anything.)

This is how it ends.


	7. Chapter 7

She stands in the distance as they burn John Winchester's body.

She feels like she doesn't belong right now, like she's an intruder in the grieve of the brothers standing before her. She's not a part of their family after all; she didn't even know John that well, not at all really. She'd wanted to stand beside Dean – who was heartbroken she could tell even if he refused to say anything about it – but she had felt that would be wrong, this was something they needed to do alone. So she'd stayed behind, leaning against her car – because his car was right now a complete wreck and apparently had been towed to Bobby's – and waits until the flames die out and they leave in silence. Perhaps she should have said something then, something meaningful, but she had always been better at silence and actions than at words.

She's not the only one though Bobby seems just as lost for words as she is.

Dean spends the next weeks trying to fix his car – personally Emma thinks the car is too far gone to be fixed or, to her at least, it does seem like too much work just to fix a car. Then again if it was her beloved yellow little car that was so broken she too might be insistent on fixing it. The car is after all a connection to his now dead father and Emma understands that need for connection – she is after all the one who drags around a baby blanket given to her by the same people who had left her to die. And she sits by his side, even though she knows nothing about cars, because she knows, even if it's the only thing she does, that she cannot leave him alone. He doesn't say anything either, barely looks at her lost in his grief as he is and Sam, well all Sam wants to do is talk. And the thing is Emma understands that reaction because it's what he needs to grieve but unfortunately Dean is dealing with it in a different way (although she does agree with him on one point he might not be grieving with it at all.)

This is how it goes: Sam stays inside with Bobby and she and Dean work on the car outside.

(Two weeks later and the damn car still doesn't look any better.)

* * *

Sometimes he wonders how many things his father kept hidden.

The thing is Dean doesn't know if his father intentionally kept these things hidden or if he just never told them these things because he himself never thought they were important, just minor details of his life. Take Ellen Harvelle for instance, she had obviously heard about him and Sam, she knew enough about them to be able to recognize them on sight but he himself had never even heard her name. (Though now that he thinks about it that might actually have something to do with Bobby.) But even though she'd been trying to contact his father she is of absolutely no help to them (he does like her though but right now he has very little patience.)

(For the record he's not embarrassed that Jo managed to get the better of him – alright maybe a little – he's kind of used to it after all, Emma is an expert at getting the better of him.)

He really does appreciate the fact that they are trying to help – even if he still has no idea how they even knew his father – and he suspects that, had he met him at any other time, he might even have liked Ash. But at the moment he just found him annoying – although to be fair to the guy at the moment he found everything annoying, including Emma and he knows that's all just a part of his grief. The thing is grief is making him think the strangest things like he has this intense desire to just take Jo up on her offer because it would make him feel better for a second but he knows, he knows it would be terrible because the cost would be too great, so instead he decides to follow Sam on his case.

That's probably his best choice since Emma would kill him slowly if he cheated on her.

* * *

Apparently Sam Winchester, the fearless hunter, is afraid of _clowns_.

It cracks her up completely, though she tries not to let it show because she knows people can be afraid of the strangest things. Dean for instance, she knows, is afraid of flying – a fact which she discovered last year during a case which had been hilarious as well and she herself is terribly afraid of spiders. (Like any spiders, Dean finds it hilarious, because she'll jump a feet in the air when she sees the smallest of spiders.) The thing is there something so incredibly weird about being afraid of clowns – because you know plane's crash and spiders can be dangerous and are nasty little creatures – but clowns are just _clowns. _

Although, to be fair to Sam, they now do have a killer-clown.

She should have been keeping a close eye on them since she wasn't at all convinced that going on a hunt was a good plan (their father had only just died after all and she was not entirely convinced they could survive a hunt because their grieve might make them more impulsive.) But she had been distracted, for quite a while already and she knew that Dean was beginning to notice – that had been one of the good thing about Dean being lost in his grieve he had been grieving too much about his father to place any attention to how she was acting. She knew he would be asking soon, in a couple of days, and she would have to explain what she was thinking, if she could do it at all.

The thing is ever since she'd seen him with his father she'd been thinking about her own parents.

She'd always been slightly curious about them, about the reasons they'd decided to leave her, about the way they looked and all sort of other things. The search for his father had already awoken those thoughts but she'd never actually thought about acting on them mostly because she'd always been too afraid of the answer. But once she'd seen him with his father – and later his reaction to his father's death – it had opened all sort of questions. And now she wanted (needed) to know all those things and she had been searching for answers while Dean had been somewhat lost in his grieve. The problem was really that she knew that to find her answers she would need to leave them (at least for a while) because she knew that they needed to find yellow-eyes to get the answers on their questions. She wouldn't ask them to go off their path because finding the demon that killed both your parents is of course far more important but she also needed _her _answers.

She was afraid of leaving though.

She was afraid because the last time somebody had left them – Richie – she'd never actually heard from him again (occasionally they would hear something, just enough not to have them think he was dead – which given how much trouble he could get himself in was definitely an option – but not enough to be called keeping in touch.) And she was afraid it would happen to them, afraid that it would change everything about them and she didn't want that, she wanted to keep living with Dean and have a shot at her happy ending. But she needed to know.

It was all very confusing.

* * *

Something was troubling Emma.

It was a fact that, too his discredit, he didn't realize until after Jo left their group – angry because apparently his father had gotten her father killed and he couldn't exactly blame her for it. He's blaming it on his grieve and anger around his father's death and he knows that Emma would accept it; the problem is really _he _doesn't accept it. The point it something is troubling her and whatever it is it has something to do with him because every time she looks at him there is something in her eyes that troubles him. But it's not until much later that night, after Sam has gone to sleep, and he finds her sitting on the hood of his car holding her baby blanket that he begins to realize what it's all about.

"Hey, Ems, you thinking about your parents?"

"Yeah, a little, wondering a lot about everything. Also been thinking about maybe trying to find them, or at least try to find out about them."

"So why don't you?"

"Because it's not that easy, I don't know anything about them. All I know was that I was left abandoned at the side of the road and I was found by a little boy."

"Maybe if you find out who the little boy is.."

"Yeah, but I would have to leave."

"I could go with you."

"No, you need to find Azazal, you need to put an end to it and you need to keep hunting. Besides I think I need to do this on my own. I'm sorry."

He could stop her he supposes, he could tell her that he couldn't live without her that he needed her right now and he knew she would stay. But what would that say about him?

"Don't be sorry, just go and find your answers. Or at least try."

"Are you sure."

He takes her hand and kisses her knuckles.

"Of course."

* * *

She leaves in the morning at first light.

She hugs Sam before she leaves – which is strange because it's one of the only times they've ever hugged (the other one being last year when they thought Dean was going to die, which seems to be a yearly occurrence.) Dean kisses her desperately like he's afraid – just like she is – that it might be the last time. When she was a child, moving around from place to place, she'd learned quite quickly that looking back at the place you were leaving would always hurt more, especially because you were more than likely never going back.

She knew it would hurt to look back.

But she _was_ going to come back (in four weeks they'd meet at Bobby's.)

So this time, for the first time, she looked back once.

Dean was still standing there watching her go.


	8. Chapter 8

At first Emma finds nothing.

And it makes her slightly distraught but at the same time she's not that surprised: it's hard to find a person that doesn't want to be found after all. She'd known for a long time that it was pretty much a longshot because she knew far too little about them and what had happened to actually expect to find him. Still it was extremely frustrating because even though she knew logically that there was little to no change that she would find them she'd still hoped she would. Dean – with whom she talked every night even if it was only a minute – kept telling her to stay calm that these things took time, and he would know – of course he would his father spend the better part of his life looking for the demon that murdered Dean's mother but Emma had absolutely no desire to wait twenty years just to get answers (she feels she's already waited long enough) and she knows that if nothing comes she might give up (she probably never will.)

The thing is she's not just looking for her parents.

It's the most important part of her search though because it's the one thing she needs to know about her past (needs to understand.) But she's also trying to find out what happened to the Jameson's because they might never have been her family – even though she still wished they had been – but she still needed to know they at least turned out _alright. _And really the truth is she can't help but feel guilty that their lives were somewhat destroyed: she had been the one after all to befriend a ghost and she had been the reason Carla got so angry that night. (Dean kept telling her it wasn't her fault and that she should try to let it go, that it would be easier if she never saw them again, he didn't – with the exception of her of course. And she could understand that, she did it too, because the people they saved well they were never actually a part of their lives, just of their nightmares. But the Jameson's had been her family, no matter how brief and she _needed _to know.)

Three days she's supposed to go back to Dean she finds Thomas.

As it turns out it's far easier to find someone if you at least know something about them – which is somewhat logical after all. The private detective she found – the one that Bobby had recommended her – was a genius if also at the same time, if that was even possible, a complete and total idiot. But he was worth the money she paid him and he knew how to find someone – and she wonders briefly if he would be able to find her son but she had promised herself long ago that she would never look for him because he deserved a better life than she could ever give him – and he had managed to find the Jameson's. As it turned out after the whole Carla episode – which they had never been able to probably explain not that Emma could blame them – Paul had Cindy had somehow managed to explain everything somewhat and they had gotten Thomas back quite quickly. They had however never gotten her back – and she does wonder if they ever even tried, I they didn't think that she wasn't worth all the trouble. But then the private eye – called Serge which is a terrible name by the way – found proof that they had tried to get her back but they'd never succeeded (and she kind of loves them a little for that even if it's far too late to change anything.)

They moved out of that neighborhood though – of course they did because who the hell would want to stay in that goddamn house after all that?

She sees Thomas two days before she goes back to Dean.

She doesn't go near him though, she'd considered it to go to him and tell him who she was and meet him but that had never been a part of the plan. The thing is no matter how much they may have wanted her and no matter how much she may have wanted to in the end it didn't work out. Whether it was the ghost, or the circumstances or just the bloody foster care system she didn't get to be a part of their family. And now it was too later, something told her that if she went towards him that she wouldn't leave again because he might want her to see his parents again and they would want to help her and then she would never get away. She just sees him once as he leaves his house and then she drives away, there's no point really in living in the past.

She keeps paying the private eye though; you never know what he might find.

* * *

By the time Emma came back things were already completely falling apart.

It's not that he's clingy, not even close, and it's not that he needs Emma to stay with him constantly – wants to of course; he wants her to stay forever if she can but he understands that she needs to do things. She's got her own investigation into her past to account for – filled with parents that are awful but at least, as far as they know at least, no actual demons that destroyed it all – and she has to do that on her own. So it's not that he needs her to stay and it's not that things fell apart _because _she went away, he's pretty sure that had she decided to stick around things still would have fallen apart because whatever was going on had nothing to do with her. (At the same time he's also slightly worried about her because of what Azazal said to her once, he didn't sound like he wanted her for some reason but he sounded intrigued and that freaked him out because that damn demon already wanted his brother he certainly wasn't planning on having him use his girlfriend as well.)

The things is whatever is going on with Sammy combined with his father's last words to him – and seriously what the hell was that all about – are making him crazy.

And he really, really needs Emma to help him carry the weight.

(Even if he won't tell her everything.)

And then she's there, finally, and he feels like he's come home – even though she was the one who went away – and finally despite all that is going on he feels like somehow everything is going to be alright again. She hasn't found anything though – he can tell by the look on her face – and he's sorry about that but he's sure that someday she'll know the whole truth.

For now they're together.

And that's all that matters.

And he's so happy to have someone with him again especially when Sam disappears and turns out to be possessed by Meg – and he'd actually forgotten that somehow Emma had managed to miss meeting Meg last year, it's quite an accomplishment. That night they decide, the three of them after getting rid of all the evidence – because apparently that's what they do now – that they should really get that anti-possession mark tattooed because there's no way he's going through all of that again. In the end Emma can deal with the pain of that better than he and Sam can – not that they cried or anything.

* * *

"Alright you two go check out the warehouse and we'll meet here later?"

"Yeah, yeah, you go slack off."

As far as last conversations go with your brother Dean will attest to the one he had that night wasn't exactly the best one ever – in his defense he didn't actually know that it would be the last conversation with his brother. Though considering their hunters and all the trouble they manage to get themselves in perhaps Dean should start thinking that every conversation might be their last one – but if he does that he might turn out just as paranoid as his father or any of the other crazy hunters he's met over the years. The point is that night he and Emma went to the warehouse, to check out what was going on, while Sam went to get a motel room and check their dad's journal. (Really it was an elaborate excuse so that he and Emma could spend some time together and this way it at least _seemed_ like they were working.)

As far as plans go this one was a _bad _one.

He wakes in a strange apartment with a girl he's never seen before in a world where his mother doesn't die in the fire – but his father somehow still dies around the same time he does in the other world, he's finding it very hard to call it the real world – and somehow that world is better (and worse at the same time.) It's really the girlfriend that really hits him because apparently in a world where his father doesn't go hunting he never meets Emma and he's sad about that but his mother is alive and he wants to live in this world. So he does, he goes to diner, he's happy Jessica is alive (sad that he and Sam don't get along that well but with Jessica and his mom alive he still considers it somewhat of a win) and for a while it works. And then, as they're leaving the restaurant he sees _her _standing at the other side of the street, looking scared and hurt and he wants to run to her and hold her and save her from whatever hurt her.

Because it's _Emma. _

He freezes for a second – because quite obviously the Emma he sees doesn't belong here – and in the time it takes to turn to Sam to see if he's seen her too she's suddenly gone. And he remembers, vaguely but he remembers going with her to the warehouse and then _nothing. _And that freaks him out because he knows that this world is wrong but he still wants it to be right, no matter what because his mom is _alive _(and Jessica too of course but if he's completely honest with himself it's his mother he truly cares about; which he thinks is somewhat logical.) But Emma is hurt and something is wrong and by the time he discovered that the people he saved had died in this world he'd already accepted that this wasn't his world and he'd be leaving just as soon as he figured out how.

He finds her hanging in a warehouse the next day – or the same day he has absolutely no idea – and he physically _hurts. _

And then his mother's there and he wants to stay but knows he can't.

He doesn't even feel the pain of the stab wound.

(He wakes to Sammy, _his _Sammy holding him close and telling him it's alright.)

* * *

Emma wakes in a strange room that is quite obviously hers but she doesn't remember.

She can hear voices carrying from downstairs but she has no idea how she even got here, let alone where here _is. _She remembers Sam's teasing voice as she and Dean left for the warehouse and she remembers driving up and getting out of the car but that's the last thing she actually remembers. It's kind of freaky because she knows that she's supposed to be with Dean but he's definitely not here and she doesn't know which house this is but she does know that she doesn't belong here.

Except that somehow she does.

Because the room looks normal but it's painted in her favorite color and the computer on the desk is turned on and the paper she had been writing –or her dream-self had been writing this is going to be very confusing to explain later – clearly has her name on it and there are pictures of her and a happy family and some friends all around. It's clearly her room except of course for the fact that she has never actually been here before. It's creepy and she would have climbed out the window to find Dean and figure out what the hell is going on except that someone calls her name and her door opens and the person calling is more than definitely Cindy (she looks older yes but it's her alright.)

Wherever she is she has somehow ended up in a world where she grew up as the second child of Cindy and Paul Jameson.

And she loves it.

Except of course that in this world there was never a ghost and as such she never met Dean. Whom she did meet, some years ago, was Neal because the one thing she has in this world that matters that she doesn't in the other one is her _son_. (Who she apparently named Cassidy.) And she holds him in her arms, close to her and she loves him and she wants to stay because she finally has what she wants the most. (She knows this world is wrong, she knows that she won't be staying but if she can for a while than it will be enough.)

At a certain point, when she stands in front of the window holding her little boy she sees Dean standing at the other side of the road looking at her.

He looks tired and wounded and _wrong_.

When she blinks he's gone.

(She wakes later to Sam untying her and telling her it will be alright. She's not so sure.)

* * *

The thing about riding around in two cars – and this is something Dean discovered a long time ago – is that at a certain point things will go wrong.

And they've had it all over the years: one of them gets lost the other laughs; one of them gets stuck in traffic, a flat tire, a busted car and every variation of all those events. (And he did tell her it would be easier if they just used one car but she had been adamant that she wanted to keep _her _car. He'd asked her why this was important and she'd countered with "well if you're so sure we only need one car why don't we just get rid of your car. It's just a car after all." And that effectively ended any conversation they might ever have about that.) It is however because they are riding around in two cars that Emma is not with him when Sam goes missing yet again (and that is seriously becoming a regular occurrence.)

She stopped to get them something several towns over – personally Dean thinks she stopped because she saw the shops and wanted to get something, maybe even a gift for Sam's birthday which he didn't really mind at the time but once Sam disappeared it freaked him out. Though she tells him that she will join him as soon as he can he instead sends her to some places he thinks Sam might be (but he's never actually there.)

And now he's on his way to the roadhouse because Ash has an idea.

(He doesn't really care what he thinks as long as it gets his brother back.)

The ringing of his phone brings him back to the world (which is probably a good thing since he wasn't paying attention to his driving.)

"Sam?"

"No it's Emma; I take it you haven't found him."

"No, you hear anything?"

"Nope. Listen where are you I'll come to you."

"I'm on my way to the roadhouse you know the way?"

"Yeah, I'm actually pretty close by, I'll wait for you there. Love you."

"Love you."


	9. Chapter 9

Over the years he'd seen many things that made his heart stop.

Many things that made him want to die or find a way to turn back time and change just one second of his live. It started when he was a child when he stood outside of his house and watched it burn down and it ended with him and Bobby standing in what is left of the roadhouse. His heart stops and he wants to fall to his knees and forget about everything but he can't because his little brother still needs saving (and at this point it is the only thing that is keeping him standing.) He wants to go back and change everything, he wants to not have asked Ash to do this – but if he hadn't then he wouldn't have been able to find Sam not that he can do that now – he wants to not tell Emma to drive here. He stands after he finds Ash – and the only reason he knows it's even him is that damn watch – and he looks to find Bobby looking at him with a devastated look and he suspects he doesn't look much better.

"Oh my god. Emma, I told her to come here and…"

"Look, Dean, calm down. Maybe she's not here yet."

"She was closer than we were, she and Ellen..God…"

"Call her."

"What?"

"Emma, call her."

And for a moment, a second, that seems like it will make everything better, because she can't be here and once he calls her she'll pick up and she'll tell him she'll be right there. But then the phone rings somewhere to his left and he then he does fall to his knees. (Suddenly he understands how Emma felt when she thought he was going to die because his heart gave out or that time he almost died because of that 'car accident.') He's not sure how long he was out, how long he was unable to respond to Bobby's calls but he does know it must have been a while because Bobby looks frantic when he finally comes back to the world of the living.

"Dean! Snap out of it idgit!"

"Bobby, she's…"

"Look, now is not the time boy, you got to snap out of it because you still go to save Sam."

"Sam."

"That's right idgit now get up."

* * *

For one second, when he finally gets to Sammy, he thinks he might be able to salvage something of this situation.

But then there's another guy – whose name he never finds out – with a knife and Sammy's falling and suddenly his life is over. He knows even before he makes it to his little brother that he's lost, that he's all alone now, that apart at failing to protect the woman he loves he's failed at the one job he's always had: protecting Sammy. He should burn his body, that's what Bobby says, and try to snap himself out of it because the world is about to end and it needs him. (And Dean wonders why, why in Gods name is he supposed to help the world when he's just managed to about lose all that matters?) He doesn't really register Bobby leaving but he does know that the other man is gone.

And then he's alone, alone with his brother's body and his dark thoughts and he knows then that he can't do this.

Because a world without Sam is w_rong. _

(He's at a crossroads before he even realizes it and before he knows it he's marked his fate.)

And then Sam's back alive and at least something has turned out alright.

(But Emma, Emma, Emma is still gone.)

* * *

She's been running for so long she can't even feel her feet anymore.

She's quite sure Ellen, whose running beside her, feels the same way and she kind of whishes her car was still operational or at the very least that they had either a money or a phone so she could call Dean. She can only imagine what he's feeling thinking she's death – and the stupidest thing she did was leave her phone with Ash when she decided to help Ellen in the outhouse – and she knows how it must feel because she has felt it (he wasn't death at the time but he was close enough.) She'd told Ellen that perhaps they should go to the road and find a car that is willing to drive them but she, rightfully, pointed out that considering the roadhouse had just been blown up as little contact as possible with anyone they don't know was the best plan (and of course she was right.)

Still she'd never actually realized how far Bobby's was from the roadhouse (though to be fair she'd always gone in her car before this.)

And then they're there and Dean's arms are around her and he's crying and she has no idea what has happened but it feels _so_ good. And she knows, she knows, that something has happened, something more than Azazal trying to open hell's doors but there's no time to talk about it.

(Later she learns that Sam got stabbed and almost died and well she can only imagine what Dean felt when he thought he'd lost her and his little brother was dying. Thankfully both things turned out alright.)

* * *

In her all time as a hunter she's only been seriously hurt once.

(And that was last year with the same demon but a car accident instead of a hell opening.)

That time she broke her arm, this time she manages to somehow break her leg and a couple of her ribs – which is what happens when some demon throws you against somebody's headstone in their haste to get away. (Although truthfully she might have been acting the same way if she'd finally found a way out of a place like hell.) She must have passed out at some point though because when she wakes she's lying in an unfamiliar room with Dean asleep in a chair next to her bed. Logically, she deduces, she must be at Bobby's because well, where else would they have taken her? For a moment, a second, she's tempted to wake Dean so she can feel his arms around her but he looks so tired that she just lets him sleep instead.

She'll wake him later.

(Later is five hours later because she herself falls back to sleep and in the end he's the one who wakes her, accidently of course.)

"Hey honey, how you feeling?"

"Better, what's wrong with me?"

"Broken leg and broken ribs but nothing permanent. Hey, hey, stay down and don't worry about it okay. You just rest."

"What are you going to do?"

"Demons got out of hell honey, Sam and I have to go, soon not yet we're staying here a few days first but then we're going. You however are staying right here, with Bobby, until you get better. You can help him but you won't be any good on a hunt right now."

"But…"

"Emma!"

"Dean are you alright?"

"What?"

"I mean you look, I don't know, like you're not fine I guess."

"Well I spend a lot of time thinking you were dead and then Sammy…well he almost died and it was terrible. But I'm alright now, now that you're here."

He kisses her then, effectively shutting her up for a while and though she believes that there is something he's not telling her she decides not to ask him about it.

Surely if it's important he'll tell her later.

* * *

The lie comes quite easily to him.

And the thing is he knows he shouldn't have lied to her, he knows he should have told her that he was dying, he should have told her the stupid mistake he'd just made but he couldn't. Because she was hurt, because he was so happy now that she knew they were all alright and because he could imagine what her reaction would be to the news. And right now everyone's alive and so happy and he doesn't want to change it.

So he lies and kisses her and makes her forget it all.

I'll tell her later, he tells himself, I'll tell her later.

(He knows he probably never will.)

* * *

He has this picture of him, Emma and Richie standing in front of a pink house (and he really doesn't know why they were standing there or at least he doesn't remember) and for some reason Richie's hair is _green_.

That is the first image that always comes up when he thinks of Richie.

(That and the dozens of times Richie fell over his own feet.)

At least it used to be the first image. Now when he thinks of Richie – his best friend whom he'd missed quite a lot – all he can think of is him lying dead not so far from him. (And he'd known it would happen some day and he'd warned the other man but it had done nothing, nothing to change the outcome.) He spends so long sitting near his body – and talking to the demon who murdered him and wanting to save her – that he can never forget it and he can never think of something else but that when he thinks of Richie (at least not at first.)

Emma is sitting in the kitchen when they get back home and she knows, with one look at his face, that something bad has happened. If he knew how to tell her without making her heart break he would do it but there is simply no way.

"Emmma Richie's dead."

"What?"

The thing is, despite the fact that they hadn't heard from him in years he knows that he and Emma had been thinking the same thing for years. That someday he would show back up and they'd be a team again and now that possibility was gone forever.

He doesn't actually want to tell her what happened but he has to.

There's no getting around it.

* * *

Emma learns a lot of things that year.

She learns for instance – though she misses seeing it herself a fact she regrets – that you should never hold a cursed rabbit food but if you are going to never _lose _it. She also learns, and for this she is actually there though like Dean she remembers nothing of it, that pissing of a trickster always ends badly. And she learns that you can work with somebody you don't like and trust as long as somebody on your team does. (And she really, really doesn't like Ruby but Sam trusts her so it does in fact work somewhat. At least Dean doesn't like her.)

And she learns you'll always find out things about your past in unexpected times.

Usually just after you've thought that the live you're currently living is perfect.

The moment she thinks she and Dean and Sam could be really happy together and nothing could change their dynamic her phone rings and it's _Serge _telling her he's found something. (That something being the Swan family and the social worker that took care of her in the beginning.)

Dean tells her that she should go and there's something in his eyes she can't quite place.

It's just a few weeks she tells him, I won't be here for Sam's birthday though.

That's okay, he whispers, I'll see you later.

(He kisses her than and there's something there, something she's missing but she never asks and so she never knows.)


	10. Chapter 10

Their last moment happens a week before Sam's birthday.

(She didn't know _that _mattered.)

It rained that day, rained like there was no tomorrow (and there almost wasn't, she supposes.)

He doesn't care – he's _never _cared about such trivial things as rain (and seeing him like this reminds her of that time he almost died.) He's different, though it takes her a moment to understand this – so happy she is that she to see him again – he's scared of something she does not understand and he's lost, giving up on something (she does not know what.) Perhaps she should have asked – a smarter person might have – but she'd been so happy when she saw him, so relieved he was alright that she'd though, 'later, I'll ask him later.' (But later, later never came, later never would come and _he _knew but _she _did not.)

He took her out to dinner and they danced in the rain (why she cannot remember.)

(He'd looked this broken, this shattered, this in need of her to help him carry the weight – carry him through it all – of everything he had gone through, he'd looked like that with Sam last year.)

Maybe he's here because he needs her help again.

(He's not.)

He'd kissed her in the pouring rain, desperately like it was the last time, like there would never be _another _time.

(There wouldn't be.)

Like this was their last chance.

In the morning he was gone, as suddenly as he came – which surprised her because this was not like Dean at all, at least not with her – with the promise to call later and the message that his brother needed help.

He says "I'm sorry", he promises "I'll call you later," he whispers "I love you."

He _doesn't _say "I'll see you later," he doesn't whisper "Goodbye."

(She hears it anyway, but that's later once she understands.)

* * *

Long ago, and yet not that long ago, she'd sat alone in a small room (cell) and held a pregnancy test and she'd _cried. _

The world was falling apart _then. _

Now the world is different, her life has changed, _she _is different. She's older and wises and she has a guy that loves her and a life to live. And yet, in the end, in the moment, some things don't change, some things stay the same. She's still alone, in a small room that doesn't belong to her, when she finds out she's pregnant.

The first time, years ago, she'd cried because she understood that she had lost, that she could not raise a baby on her own.

This time she _smiles. _

She thinks of calling Dean then (oh she should have, how she should have) but it's Sam's birthday and this is perhaps not the time. Tomorrow, she thinks, tomorrow I'll tell him and he'll smile (tomorrow won't be there for him but she does not know not yet.)

She'd crawled in bed and imagined the future with Dean and her child and she slept peacefully.

* * *

When Emma was a child – back when she was going from one home to another – she'd read every single fairytale there was (or at least a _lot _of them.) It hadn't been by choice, not really, and it wasn't because she was so in love with fairytales, it was, in the end, simply easy. Because the one book (or books) that every home has is a fairytale book, most were not complete, most were not interesting, but they were always there. (Sometimes whole pages of stories were missing. It took her four books and three foster homes before she managed to read the full tale of Snow White for instance and when that happened, and it happened a lot, she was always slightly disappointed. Because the tale she would make up, when the story was incomplete, was always much more interesting than the _actual _tale.)

The point is, of course, that she'd never enjoyed fairytales or sought them out; they'd always sort of been there.

She hadn't been like other girls, she _hadn't _believed in magic or fairy godmothers; she hadn't believed there was a castle out there with a prince waiting just for her. (But sometimes, sometimes, she'd thought it would be nice to find that guy you are supposed to spend the rest of your life with and live happily ever after – or at least as happy as you can get. Sometimes she thinks that's what she found with Dean – but Dean would probably balk at being called prince charming.)

But sometimes it seemed that happy ending was just in reach.

Like now.

And then, at four in the morning, her phone rang.

That alone should have freaked her out because when someone calls in the middle of the night is never with _good _news. The number that flashes is Dean's – and she thinks, for a second, that something has happened to Sam or that he's hurt or a million other things before she actually answers and finds that it's not Dean at the other side but Bobby.

She _knew _in that moment what had happened but she did not want to.

"Emma?"

"Bobby? Why are _you _calling me? Where's Dean?"

"Honey, where are you?"

"Bobby…"

"Just I think it would be best if I came to you."

"No, tell _me. _Just say it."

(She _needed _him to say it because if he did not she would never believe it.)

"Dean is dead."

If she'd paid attention she would have noticed how broken he was about, if she had been paying attention she would have heard his soothing words, but of course she _wasn't_. The phone dropped then and the test, the pregnancy test that had made her so happy just a few hours ago still lay on the bedside table where she'd left it – it was mocking her now, mocking her with the possibility of what _could _have been.

She _screamed. _

(At least she thinks she did, she's not sure if she managed to make a sound.)

She'd cried.

She'd curled up in a ball and just laid there.

She doesn't really remember what came after that.

She woke – if that is the word she should be using – three days later at Bobby's, in the room she had resided in when she was healing last year. She doesn't remember him coming for her, doesn't remember coming here, she doesn't remember anything but the pain. (She thinks she saw Sam for a moment but she's not sure.)

Sam was gone, Bobby told her, and he couldn't stop him from leaving.

He'd looked at her like expected her to go too.

She didn't.

She had nowhere to go after all.


End file.
